My point about the lease for a portion of the Festival Marketplace in Downtown Edmond.
Opinion Column By Edmond Resident Lydia Lee.
Opinion pieces are reflective of the individual authors views and opinion. They are not reflective of the views of The Edmond Way, staff, nor affiliates or organization, nor are they considered factual news articles.
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Lydia Lee
The lease for a portion of the Festival Marketplace in Downtown Edmond is under scrutiny, and rightfully so. At the recent City Council meeting on April 8, 2024, concerns were raised regarding the fairness of the bidding process and the subsequent handling of the lease.
It has come to light that there was extensive communication between City staff and Brandon Lodge with Lap 7 Development, both before and during the bidding process. This breaches the principle of an "arms-length" transaction, which is essential for fairness in governmental bidding processes. Emails and other documents obtained through open records requests reveal a series of meetings and discussions between City staff and Lodge dating back to the summer of 2022. For full details of these emails and documents, I urge readers to go to the City website and review the video of agenda item 9.(c).
Despite this pre-existing relationship, the bid request was issued in November 2022. Before the closing date, a City staff member even reached out to another business, Spearman Investments, to submit a proposal. However, due to time constraints and lack of knowledge about Lodge's discussions with City staff, their proposal was abbreviated.
The evaluation committee tasked with assessing the bids was not impartial either. Members of the committee had already shown bias towards Lap 7’s brewery concept before the Spearman Group had even been interviewed. Emails between committee members confirm this bias.
Despite these irregularities and the subsequent default by Lap 7 on the lease terms, the City was attempting to amend the lease rather than terminate it, which is not a viable option according to the lease terms. Concerns were raised about the low rent amount and the perception that the process unfairly favored Lodge and Lap 7. Many of the other comments at that meeting indicated that everyone believed it was a “done-deal” with Lap 7 and that’s why no one else submitted a bid response. This feeling was echoed over and over again.
My concern is not with having a brewery in the Festival Marketplace. My concern is not with Brandon Lodge, who by all accounts is a stand-up guy with a desire to improve his community. My concern is with the City of Edmond and its employees. And now, with a City Council that ignored these issues. During my comments, several council members looked surprised and concerned. After my comments, not a single member of the Council asked for answers to the issues I raised. No explanation was provided as to how the rent amount was determined. No attempts were made to continue the item to explore these concerns. During the City Council meeting, despite raising valid concerns, no satisfactory explanations were provided, and no attempts were made to address the issues raised. Only the Mayor and Councilman Moore voted against the amendment.
The community deserves transparency and a fair bidding process. Given the flawed nature of the current agreement, it should have been terminated immediately. If the City wishes to pursue a new project, it must do so through a transparent and fair bidding process, ensuring no preferential treatment is given to any bidder.